In January 2014, a meteor entered Earth’s ambiance within the Western Pacific, as evidenced by obvious vibrational signatures of the occasion in a seismic station in Papua New Guinea. Final yr, scientists declared rubble recovered from the ocean flooring because the rejectamenta of that occasion (and a few even speculated it was a type of alien know-how). However now, one other workforce provides a unique interpretation: the vibrations had been brought on by a truck on a close-by highway, driving by on the identical time the meteor plummeted by way of the ambiance. What’s extra, the rocky bits discovered on the Pacific flooring weren’t from this meteor, the workforce concluded, which doubtless entered the ocean about 100 miles from the unique search space.
“The sign modified instructions over time, precisely matching a highway that runs previous the seismometer,” stated Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins who led the analysis. The study will be presented subsequent week on the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Convention in Houston.
“It’s actually troublesome to take a sign and make sure it’s not from one thing,” Fernando added. “However what we will do is present that there are many alerts like this, and present they’ve all of the traits we’d count on from a truck and not one of the traits we’d count on from a meteor.”
Meteors are chunks of area particles enter Earth’s ambiance. They arrive in lots of styles and sizes and might clue scientists into the historical past of the photo voltaic system and the origins of water on Earth. The most important of this century was the Chelyabinsk meteorite that exploded over Russia in 2013, shattering home windows, setting off automobile alarms, and injuring about 1,600 individuals. Not all meteors are completely international, although; final yr, a gaggle of researchers studied a meteorite that landed within the Sahara Desert in 2018 concluded it actually originated from Earth.
Preliminary evaluation of the meteor fall was performed with knowledge from the close by seismometer AU MANU on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. That evaluation, published in September 2023, concluded the meteorite was of interstellar origins and fell into the ocean simply north of the island.
However within the new paper, Fernando’s workforce relied on knowledge from sound stations in Australia and Palau, initially constructed to detect the tremors of nuclear checks. That knowledge indicated that the meteor doubtless fell over 100 miles from the place preliminary searches for the area rock had been performed.
“Localisation of the strewn subject is reliant on a single station and a sign with no clear phases,” the researchers wrote. “Due to this fact, we take into account it to be at greatest extremely overstated and at worst solely misguided.”
Avi Loeb, a prominent Harvard researcher and proponent of the concept that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been an alien probe, speculated that the recovered bits of spherical rock might be alien know-how. However that the fabric isn’t associated to the 2014 fireball, based mostly on the latest workforce’s numbers.
“No matter was discovered on the seafloor is completely unrelated to this meteor, no matter whether or not it was a pure area rock or a chunk of alien spacecraft—despite the fact that we strongly suspect that it wasn’t aliens,” Fernando stated.
A workforce led by Loeb may even be presenting their findings, which characterize the composition and potential origin of the 850 spherules, in subsequent week’s convention.
Fernando’s workforce concluded that the spherules are certainly meteorites, or a mixture of meteorite and terrestrial materials, however not associated to the 2014 meteor fall.
The reality is on the market—whether or not on the backside of the ocean or within the knowledge collected because the meteor fell. And even when the findings aren’t as out-of-this-world as alien know-how, discussing all potentialities and reviewing the information by way of the scientific course of may tie a neat little bow on this meteoritic saga.
Extra: 10 Years Ago Today, the Chelyabinsk Meteor Exploded Over Russia
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